There are two main steps to successfully solve a force problem.
1. Draw a free body diagram that represents the object and forces that are acting upon it. 2. Define all variables needed to solve the equation and solve. |
How you should draw the Free Body Diagram
Before you can successfully draw a free-body diagram, you must identify all the object(things being acted upon by an external force), and draw them with some sort of symbol. This symbol is usually a square or some simple shape. Once you have drawn the shape, label all the forces that are acting upon the object with vectors, which is a quantity with both magnitude and direction. These are drawn as arrows as well, and the forces are written close to their correlating vectors. Draw a vector for all contact forces that are acting on the object.
How you should solve the equations
For free-body diagrams, newtons second law(force is equal to mass times acceleration) can be applied to both the x and the y direction(respectively). In order to solve the actual equation, you can use algebraic methods to solve the equation mathematically. You can only do so after you have defined all variables in the equation with its corresponding numbers.
Solving forces that act at an angle
Deconstruct the vectors in your free body diagram in order to make them into x and y components. However, you are not able to put these components into the free body diagram because they aren't real. They are only used for mathematical calculations instead of on the free-body diagrams.